


all's well that ends well

by lilylilym



Category: Winner (Band)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Disassociation, Implicit drug sex, M/M, ask me because I know. Language., early 20s dude rockers are the worst, hints of drug abuse, memory tripping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 17:01:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6123352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilylilym/pseuds/lilylilym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For all the lost love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Shakespeare’s play. Stories within story. Fictions within fiction. There are two love stories and a plot twist. Non-linear timeline. Switch back and forth between stories, memories, and realities. Keep your mind open and don’t do drugs. Happy Valentine kids. This fic is not directly influenced by but rather inspired from Sherlock BBC’s The Abominable Bride. [Ghost. They are the shadows that define our every sunny day.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note: Title from Shakespeare’s play. Stories within story. Fictions within fiction. There are two love stories and a plot twist. Non-linear timeline. Switch back and forth between stories, memories, and realities. Keep your mind open and don’t do drugs. Happy Valentine kids. This fic is not directly influenced by but rather inspired from Sherlock BBC’s The Abominable Bride. [Ghost. They are the shadows that define our every sunny day.]
> 
> Thanks to Mikey-doh for the comments and suggestion for the ending. I would remain unfinished without your finish touch. So this is dedicated to you. My youth wouldn’t be the same without you.

 

Cross-post with [](http://chocolatewinbox.livejournal.com/profile)[**chocolatewinbox**](http://chocolatewinbox.livejournal.com/) Valentine Fic event.

 [](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/kocch/15380754/495/495_original.jpg)

  


 

         The fifteen minutes phone ring wakes him up. “Do I have a home line, oh my god?” He mumbles while putting his feet on the cold ground and dragging his body to the living room to pick up the phone. “Hi, this is Lee Seunghoon.” He slaps his face before speaking just to give an impression that he is up, out and about, and not totally sleeping in until 3 pm on a weekday. “Oh, hi nurse Kim, of course I remember you. Yes, I do have an appointment on February 10… oh is it today? At 2:30 pm, right.” He quickly thinks of a reason to give the kind woman who calls him half an hour after the appointment to confront him instead of making the same effort, just half an hour earlier. But again, even if it’s actually her _business_ , it’s not _her business_ , to call every damn patient’s house and remind them of their own commitments and responsibilities.

         “Yes, I deeply apologize, something important came up and I had left my phone home all day, that’s why I missed all your calls.” He reaches his cellphone on top of the coffee table and glances at total seventeen missed calls. _Good number_. “I just literally walked into the door when I hear my home phone ring. You caught me there.” Seunghoon makes a giggling sound with the same dull and sleepy expression on his face. “Can we redo my appointment, nurse Kim? No, it’s really okay for me, I’m really okay. It can totally wait a few days. No, I really don’t mind. In fact, I insist.” He ends the woman’s pressure of him showing up right at that moment with a stern voice. When he hears the deep sigh from the other line, Seunghoon knows he wins. He hangs up the phone, look at his three-days night gown and around at the unusual untidy living room filled with to-go food and pizza boxes, and wonders how this happens.

         Lee Seunghoon is a twenty-nine year old lecturer, with a master in Literature and Psychology, who already gave up on the idea of pursuing a doctorate because the reality of job scarcity didn’t convince him that another five years of student loans was worth it. He teaches three introductory courses for the Literature department and two selective courses in a community college a year, making barely enough money to rent a one bedroom apartment, feed his rescued cat, and can afford a beer every other weekend or two eat-out dinners every month if he’s so inclined. The students taking his class often told him how “chill” and “understanding” he is, which he doesn’t know what to tell them aside than “I’ve been your age once.” (Really, he could go on and tell them about what _that_ means. But the younger folks deserve much better than dealing with simultaneously tuition hike and their teacher telling bad jokes during class, so he forwent the sentiment.) His side job/hobby is writing for columns and decorating the private website where he would put up his poems and short stories for free. He attempted to publish his novels a few years back but the effort didn’t go anywhere because he refused to change anything that the editors suggested. He has therapist appointment once every three weeks, part of the university health insurance package. He’d call his mom in the hospital once every two weeks and write down everything she said into his notebook so he can show them to his shrink in their meetings. His old best friend, Jinwoo, recently got in contact with him through email and asks to meet up, to which he agreed.

         “I have been following your works you put online, mate,” Jinwoo said, “and I think it’s time to reconnect. After all, we had been friends for most of our lives.” Jinwoo was surprisingly polite about the invitation given the situation under which they stopped talking, even with its obvious guilt-tripping undertone. Seunghoon realized he actually missed this guy a lot. Somehow he managed to forget the fact that he cut all ties with his friends and acquaintances a few years back and moved to another neighborhood of the city where the risk of running into them remains subsequently lower than five percent at all times.

         “Where should we meet up?” is the first text he sends to Jinwoo after seven years. He finally unblocks Jinwoo’s number on his phone and it really makes him feel weird to look at the messages from Jinwoo, the last one dated at 2009. The instant reply from the guy is quite telling of how much Jinwoo means his invitation. He doesn’t take time to act new. “Where do you think?”

         “Do you really want to do that, asshole?” Seunghoon takes a few second to consider his language.

         “Worst scenario, write a fucking novel and get over it.” Jinwoo replies. “Come visit the place that made you run for your life.”

         “You bet your ass I did.”

         “What did? You wrote a novel or you got over it?”

         “Both. I will see you on Friday.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

         Today, let’s talk about my favorite topic. Let’s talk about him.  
  
         Amongst every skies ever made in the entire history of universe, he is my favorite sky. He is that of a summer noon; the sun is too bright and the ocean too loud, naked toes slipping on hot sand, pulled away by the rippling and sparkling of the estuary. He brings that of a fall breeze, touching one’s skin with light stroke of wind like drawing a very gentle painting with water color brush. He carries that of the spring snow, melting in fingers and disappearing within moments like an inevitable ending; the traces of its existence dry up and vanish bits by bits leaving us no other choice but to witness and never to hold back. He is that of a winter night, cold winds crying loneliness outside the broken windows, dreaming of the warmth from lovers’ breath and their intertwined hands, touched foreheads, locked bodies. He is love poems to my ear and sweet colors to my eyes. Without him, I wouldn’t know of all the sensations that human in love usually feel.

_From “The Roofless House” – Lee Seunghoon.  
Grand Prize Winner of Competitive Writings for Middle School Students, 2002. Category: Fairy tales._

* * *

  
  


 

         A few days later, Seunghoon carefully takes the first step into the familiar neighborhood. One right turn after the intersection and he can see _the place_ right away. Jinwoo is sitting right outside the coffee shop, in a table that never existed back then when they used to frequent this spot. He waves at Jinwoo but the guy doesn’t even look up from his phone.

         “What are you reading? I waved at you for like ten minutes.” Seunghoon complains as soon as he approaches. This clearly isn’t how you say hello to a once-best friend after years of absence, but he goes ahead because he’s Lee Seunghoon, and if Kim Jinwoo is who he knew, the guy wouldn’t even blink at this.

         “Hi there. I didn’t see you.” Jinwoo smiles while putting his phone aside. “Was just reading this thing." Seunghoon takes a quick glance at the screen and makes a face. “You weren’t kidding about following my blog.”

         “Hello, Seunghoon. How are you?” Jinwoo turns his phone upside down and looks Seunghoon straight in the eyes. “It’s been a while.”

         “I’m… good.” Seunghoon says, amazed at himself of how convincing that sounds. “I’m actually really good, hyung. How have you been?”

         “Making it do.” Jinwoo shrugs without breaking eye contact. The sparkles in his eyes haven’t gone out – not all of them. Seunghoon takes a minute to look up and down at his best man. Kim Jinwoo, at one point, was the only connection he had with this world, looks like he participated well in social life. He looks almost like a stranger with his brown hair, cut and gelled neatly to the side, showing parts of faded-shaven scalp underneath. In casual white T-shirt and a checked cardigan, matched with dark brown chinos and nude loafers, he is identical to the countless off-work male office workers Seunghoon passes by on a weekend. They could have met and totally missed each other without a second thought.

         “Look at you.” Jinwoo gently laughs. “Your hair is black now? Wearing buttoned shirt with blazer and khakis? You really look like a writer, boring and all.”

         “Life has been unkind to us, hasn’t it?” Seunghoon only smiles. A waitress brings their order up. “Earl grey, tea bag style.” Jinwoo says upon seeing Seunghoon’s raised eyebrow. “I ordered for both of us.”

         “Right.” He chuckles. “This place doesn’t serve no good drinks nor food…”

         “But the people turned out to not be that great after all.” Jinwoo continues his thought. They clink their tea cups.

         “Here’s to the old days.”

 

\+ + +

 

 

         It started with a dare. A few hangouts to a strange coffee shop, that was all it took.

         Lee Seunghoon was on his way to the coffee shop where “all the cool kids in town hang,” the words Jinwoo – the slightly older friend that had been in the same class with Seunghoon since elementary - breathed effortlessly while pulling his hand harder than he could ever imagined the tiny guy was capable of. “It is chic, I’m telling you.” Kim Jinwoo back then still had the pink ombre hair at the end of his tiny hairtail, _punk rock aesthetic_ as he always described himself, in Metallica T-shirt and ripped jeans (the non-skinny type that makes you look 200% shorter. And Jinwoo didn’t have that _much_ to spare. Seunghoon never actually told him that.) The reason why Jinwoo was so devoted to bring Seunghoon to this coffee shop was clear, Seunghoon better know why, and it was not because Jinwoo had chewed his ears off. “You gotta meet this rock band that played in our campus’ festival the other day. I found the band. I was the one who found them and brought them to perform.”

         “I didn’t even see them.” Seunghoon shrugged. “You know I ain’t about that life anymore. I’m not, like,” he sneaked a glance at Jinwoo’s outfit, then chuckled, “punk like you are.”

         “They are not a punk band, Seunghoney.” Jinwoo kept going without realizing Seunghoon’s subtle mock. He probably did, but he wouldn’t care either way. He knew better than taking Seunghoon’s rude remarks seriously – the Capricorn guy always thinks his jokes are special and witty, but the Virgo in Jinwoo takes pride in the fact that he never loses his cool in front of everyone. “They are alternative metal. But I didn’t expect much from a ballad listener like you are.”

         Seunghoon decided to give in, “okay, here’s two dollars for all the shit you know that I don’t. Amaze me.” Jinwoo mischievously smiled at him as he stopped in front of a torn-up wooden door that tried really hard to look like one. The yellowish brown color indicated through faded paint, intended to enhance the color of natural wood, clearly failed to do its part; the bizarre-looking oxidized metal bar which already turned to the ugly green color integrated into the door didn’t really look medically approved to touch. On top of the door, the sign of the coffee shop said “Magnum opus.” The word, _Magnum opu_ s, how prideful so, painted by red paint on an old plastic white board (which already turned yellow – the resemblance of wrongly applied communism-inspired dictatorship is uncanny). Seunghoon almost froze at the disastrous nature of the scene. “Jinwoo what the hideous fuck” was basically the only thing Seunghoon could sputter at the moment. “Oh but it hides treasure inside.” Jinwoo said as he took out his handkerchief and carefully cover the door knob before pushing in. Seunghoon didn’t trust him one bit, but he rolled his eyes and followed suit.

         When Seunghoon and Jinwoo settled for earl grey tea – the tea bag type, because according to Jinwoo, “this place doesn’t serve no good drinks nor food, but the people in it make up for everything,” there was virtually nobody that Jinwoo promised there. Seunghoon took a look around and readjusted his expectation. It wasn’t quite bad, the green couches were comfy, accompanied by colorful pillows, which all in all didn’t look so bad under the permanently dim yellow atmosphere coming from the only light bulb in the whole place. He wasn’t quite sure if that’s the concept they going for, but it worked. When things are ugly beyond repair, just turn off the light. “That’s how you were able to date incoherent messes, hyung. You just pretend they don’t have any faults by either not let them speak or put a bag over their heads.” Jinwoo looked at Seunghoon with hurtful eyes but Seunghoon didn’t even feel remotely guilty.

         “Where is the band???” Seunghoon asked. “I can’t believe I let you waste my time like this?” Jinwoo turned his head away to hide his frustration when Seunghoon wouldn’t be able to comprehend just how much he missed by not meeting the band.

         “Screw you, Seunghoon.”

         “Oh, you’ll have to do. I thought an orgy with the band was an option at first.” He replied with a sarcastic tone. Jinwoo pinched Seunghoon’s waist as hard as he could and only let go when the younger screamed on top of his lungs – which didn’t disturb the coffee shop one bit, obviously, since nobody was there.  
         .  
         .  
         .  
         “Isn’t it funny? This place hasn’t change at all.” Seunghoon makes a comment after looking around for a bit. “There is nobody ever. I wonder how they make money off such a hideous place.”

         “You’d be surprised.” Jinwoo circles his tea cup in his palms.

         “Mm?”

         “Too ugly is a kind of beauty. And you know that.”

         “Right.” Seunghoon lowers his head and looked at his cup. See, he finishes it anyway, even when the bland tea bag smells like it has been in the cupboard for decades. Over the table, Jinwoo mindlessly taps the side of his empty cup without saying anything.  
         .  
         .  
         .  
         One week after the last visit, Seunghoon went back to the coffee shop on his own. He found himself settling down on the corner of the couch right next to the piano. He took a look around the toom. It wasn’t so bad once you’re used to the atmosphere. Not the color or anything at sight, of course, everything is a bad mixture of shapes, lights and colors – just the fact that this tiny place managed to be so out of touch with the rest of the city, where they proudly presented the hideous, ugly furniture to customers without apologies. It was never a good thing to show your bad angle to your lover, but in reality, you will eventually do. Too close a thing, it loses its vanity. But only distance and death remains eternally vain – we all know that. Plus, there was always nobody.

         He lay back on the couch and put his right shoulder against one of the piano’s legs. For such a poor state, this place is still a musical coffee shop, as told by a very passionate Jinwoo the last time. They had all kinds of musical instruments and even a small stage for people to perform if they’re so inclined. They didn’t hire bands or organize performances during weekends like other places; but musicians of all sorts, especially the young and broke, would gather round here after performances for hours. Some practically lived here (you just never really saw them, they all hid somewhere in the back).

         Lee Seunghoon’s relationship with music was rather complicated. His dad was supposedly a musical genius but his mother spent fortunes on him just to get him to play an instrument. The poor woman was too stubborn – she missed her husband so badly that she wanted to reconstruct a musical genius on her own. Seunghoon failed her in every way he could; he inherited nothing from his dad, neither the music nor the drawing talent. The world’s most beloved man of his world’s most beloved woman could compose a song in ten minutes with lyrics sound like love poems to the ears, he played all the music instruments in the book, from piano to guitar to drum and even flute. The paintings he did were all sold to some famous vintage galleries elsewhere that Seunghoon didn’t know of – he didn’t need to, because his mother would tell the stories over and over again every day. He didn’t inherit the extraordinarily short-lived lifespan either: by the time he became a senior in college, he had managed to outlive him. Seunghoon inherited nothing from that man, except for his look. Same extraordinary height, broad but slightly stooped shoulders, which easily makes him look smaller than he actually is, a bony face with high cheekbones and those unmistakable single eyelids. If he wouldn’t have a different hairstyle (which his mother didn’t approve of at first), the resemblance is uncanny. And that makes it all the more painful.

         He opened his notebook that he never went anywhere without, and started to write. Writing, far less a talent and a much underrated art form; nonetheless, the only thing that makes life easier for him. Writing was the only thing he’s been good at. He probably got it from his mother, whose fascination with literature was only second to her obsession with the late husband. She was always extremely eloquent, that was, when she wasn’t busy commiserating. Seunghoon grew up listening to not fairy tales but the bed time stories his mother told about his father. But the stories always changed, and Seunghoon wasn’t sure if they were meant to be different every time, or that Mrs. Lee just spoke out loud her own fictions using his father’s name. But he never asked anyway, because those stories were marvelous, and Mrs. Lee’s storytelling kept him hooked even when he knew the ending. _And that’s something_.

         He penned his first story when he turned fifteen, about a house that gave up its rooftop because it fell in love with the sky. But then the sky wound’t just give the house sunny days and chilling wind; there are also thunderbolts and snow storms and tornadoes. He won a literature competition for middle schoolers with it, and started to publish his works in local magazines and newspapers. The small fanbase that he got were smitten with, in their words, “dark but delightful reads,” “sharpened with realistic pain and traumas,” or “reads like a love story but really is all about human lives.” Seunghoon replied to none of the fan letters that were sent to him; he didn’t really care about people’s thoughts.

         Plus, he never managed to get his mother read any of his works. She said she disliked fictions that read just like her diaries.

 

* * *

 

_Let me tell you something. There is nothing more alienating to the truth than too much truth. Truth is, always, a must-have coherent idea that could make legible the nature of a certain event. Truth is never the complicated, entangled layers of incidents, despite them being there under the day light for people to see. It is always what’s underneath. Truth is never readily presented. Human don’t want the stories that write themselves. It has to be the process of digging down, picking, choosing, interpreting, and finally naming the most important piece of information as the Truth. As a whole, it is messy, reluctant, hard to breath, condescending, complex, heartbreaking, extraordinary, but present. That a person is dead and their whole reality just physically collapses on their feet, shattering the worlds carried on by the people left behind is never enough description for truth. Those are just factualities, or conditions of truth. ‘Why’ is the key question. A person vanishes and the despair that causes ain’t no truth – people need to know why. Why a person, with all the liveliness of their world, would waste it all on the uncommendable – is the truth, not the ways their ruined life marks the eternal sufferings for their loved ones. How they destroyed themself to that point – is the truth, never the pains they must have endured or those that their families would have to get used to.  
         Factualities are jokes, and truth usually is the worst of all. One thing is certain: they are not always realities._

Posted 1st January 2016 by LSH.  
Categories: non fiction, uncategorized.

* * *

 

 

          “How’s your mother doing anyway?” Jinwoo asks away while carefully eyeing Seunghoon’s facial expression. He knows too well the younger friend was never open to discuss the matter back then. “You seem to write a lot about her these days.”

          “You really do read my stuff.” Seunghoon chuckles while sipping from his second cup of earl grey. Jinwoo just glares at him in the absence of a reply; he wants none of those pretentious laughs and polite answers. “Even hardcore fans of mine never venture into the uncategorized pieces. They’re there for the plots.”

          “Seunghoonie, I’m not your reader. I’m your friend.”

          “Right.”

          “Everything is okay, right?”

          “Why the rhetorical question, hyung?”  
         .  
         .  
         .  
         When Seunghoon looked up again, somebody else already occupied the piano seat. A guy, in his late teens at best, with tanned skin, bright eyes, and sharp eyebrows, was playing some unfamiliar slow melody. He got a toned body that can actually be complimented by casual baggy clothes. The whole look was completed with a funny looking partially bleached spiked hair. Seunghoon almost laughed at the image. He looked like a B-Boy trying to impress an audience who was into ballad. That can also be me, hello. Seunghoon silently thought in his head as he pretended not to look at the (amazingly hot and dazzlingly attractive) guy. One look, and he knew right away.

         _This guy ain’t it._

         But he should have known that those we wanted to avoid always come back.

          “What is this song, it sounds so familiar.” Jinwoo didn’t even try to hide his awe looking at the younger guy playing the piano. Seunghoon didn’t bother answering. He heard this song before, the last time he was here without telling Jinwoo. So he better not say anything now.

          “Ask your friend, he knows.” The younger guy smiled at Jinwoo as he finished off at a fancy last note – Seunghoon slightly rolled his eyes; who still does that cheesy glissando in that chord progression? He was absolutely not impressed by the guy he whose name he didn’t even know, not when he – a stranger Seunghoon just met - had the audacity to look him straight in the eyes and whisper the name of the song really slowly as if realizing that Seunghoon was not the best evaluator of piano solo performances.

 

          “It’s called bad day.” His nose all of a sudden got uncomfortably close to Seunghoon’s as he spoke. That should have thrown Seunghoon off, but the writer whose most hated thing in the world was his personal space being invaded was alarmingly calm.

         “Pardon?” He asked why glaring back at the other’s eyebrows. Not the eyes, never the eyes when you have a showdown – the opponent would have this instant vulnerability because here you are looking at their face but disregarding their eyes like you are beyond them. It didn’t work with this guy.

         “I said it’s the bad day.” He nonchalantly repeated; his squinted eyes glued on Seunghoon’s.

         “A bad day you mean.” Seunghoon snorted. “Should be grammatically correct, even when you are being rude.”

         “God, no.” The guy chuckled. “I mean that’s the title of the song. Bad Day.” How could a person say all of this and do all of that without removing their fucking head away from him was still a wonder to Seunghoon.

         “Apparently not as famous to call it _the_ Bad Day.”

         “Arguing all you want, wouldn’t change the fact that you’re having one.” This kid’s head is still there, hanging right in front of him, and it pissed him the fuck off.

         “Oh, love.” Seunghoon raised one of his eyebrows. “My bad day started way before the cute little atom, which would constitute your cute little ass in the far future, was given birth to by mother nature, and it will last way beyond the day the last atom on earth utter a piece of melody so uninteresting they would name it ‘Bad Day’. No worries though, I will have listened to them all.”

         “You like my cute ass.” The younger guy grinned, showing his perfect white teeth. Seunghoon stood right up, threw some cash onto the table, and left without saying anything. “You said it yourself!” From behind, the tanned kid kept waving at him and yelling out. Seunghoon was fairly glad the coffee shop wasn’t the busiest spot in town.

 

          “I actually don’t know this song.” Seunghoon pretended to drink his tea, ignoring the tanned boy’s stupid grin. He styled his hair different today and looked more presentable with a button shirt, black jeans, and a studded jacket.

         “You guys met before?” Jinwoo asked in doubt. “I didn’t know that you guys met before.”

         “Yes we did. I was playing the same piece the last time he was here.” Before Seunghoon could say anything, the tanned kid smiled widely. “You weren’t there though, Jinwoo hyung.” _Thanks a lot, fucker was_ all Seunghoon mumbled inside his head while managed to make himself look as if he wasn’t involved in this situation in any way. Jinwoo’s glare let him know very well that he didn’t look convincing at all.

         “So,” Seunghoon cleared his throat. “Am I supposed to know who this strange person is? I must have been sleeping on the day when they announce his importance to the world.” The guy still kept his grin on and that offended Seunghoon to no end. Come and let me smack that smile out of your (not so) ugly face, kid.

         “In fact, you did.” Jinwoo gave him a side-eye as he proudly tapped the tanned kid on the back. “You weren’t there to witness Song Minho’s excellency and the performances they put on our show!”

         So that’s Song Minho. Jinwoo could be exaggerating, but he never lied when it comes to hot guys. Seunghoon mindlessly took a look up and down _the_ Song Minho once again as he slightly approved the older guy’s good taste.

         “Oh.” Minho exclaimed. “You _like_ my cute ass.”

         “Nah he don’t.” Before Seunghoon could say anything, Jinwoo stated loudly. “He doesn’t do dating. Like ever.” What’s with people trying to speak for Seunghoon today. But as usual, Seunghoon didn’t bother to correct. He stopped correcting people from a very long time ago – the act to him is repetitive and exhausting. And also useless. People are never interested in _understanding_ – they only want the _knowing_ part. And there is a stagnant difference between the two. See, ‘understanding’ implies the perception that posits the subject which needs understood at the center of this process – the understander would have to look at things from the perspective of the subject, while ‘knowing’ would turn the same subject into an object of inquiry – the knower extracts information through an investigation of the object, then tell the story. Funny, the _knowing_ of that very difference, however, remains irrelevant in most people’s perception of truth.

         Seunghoon never bothered to correct anything anymore. He just knows when things ain’t it.

         _Otherwise, mother’s bedtime stories would still be his most favorite._

 

\+ + +

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

With the weirdly motivated encouragement from Jinwoo, Seunghoon reluctantly became a frequent at Magnum Opus. He finally met those three from the alternative metal band NuGalvanist, who were invited to perform at the school’s festival a few weeks back. Before he could realize, he had taken up coming to the coffee shop as a part of his schedule, with or without his friend. Nam Taehyun, the dreamy bassist and Kang Seungyoon, two years younger than Seunghoon, the cool vocal and guitarist of the band, had said hello to him on their first time meeting in the most awkward way possible, which didn’t take Seunghoon more than two seconds to realize that he was, indeed, _> known_ to these boys. He would be dreaded knowing how that happened, so he ended up not talking much for the first couple times hanging out together. The guys were surprisingly accepting with him being in their corner, or he’d rather say, they were too immersed in their own little life of young rockers – smoking and cursing a storm while dropping impromptu performances. Seunghoon enjoyed more than he thought, when he was surrounded by passionate musicians who looked like they liked music than everything else in the world. Like Kang Seungyoon. This guy would never, ever go anywhere without his guitar, and he would play the most beautiful chorus of an unwritten song, often followed by the beats from Nam Taehyun slapping the guitar’s topboard and Song Minho’s progressing chords on the piano. The melody would thicken by the minutes; the guys would nod along as if they knew exactly where this would go. At one point, Taehyun would throw in some adlibs, while Seungyoon singing random lyrics. Mino’s slow and sturdy rap always fitted perfectly with the increasing beats.

Except that the lyrics, when Seunghoon finally paid attention to it, was usually from a piece of newspaper on the table in front of them. They were all singing about a particular traffic incident that was reported in the paper. Sometimes, increased rent and economic crises of Seoul. Other times, finding missing person and most wanted criminals. And it always sounded _> marvelous_.

_Not all lyrics need to sound like poems to the ears_. Somehow that made Seunghoon grin. Somehow that made Seunghoon, for the first time in his life, feel as though being outside his room and talking to people who weren’t certified as friends at the time could be a good idea.

 

 .  
 .  
 .

 

 

 It all started with a joke. A few stupid jokes from the peers, that was all it took.

 Nam Taehyun, with Jinwoo sitting on his laps, let out a long blow of smoke while avoiding the older’s effort to steal the cigarette from him:

 “You can’t be hanging with us and not have a partner. That’s like really lame.”

  “He actually meant you can’t be a virgin at this point.” Jinwoo, newly invented red-haired boy who decided that pink highlight on pigtail hair was so emo-girl aesthetic - which was exactly why it suited him in the first place – carefully picked up the burned-over cigarette and inhaled one last hit before dropping the rest on the floor. He did it quite skillfully, like he has been a smoker for years. Taehyun directed Jinwoo to exhale into his mouth and they giggled as their nose touched. Seunghoon rolled his eyes at the scene. Since Jinwoo started seeing Taehyun, he got into all the habits that the golden-haired boy has. It wasn’t all that bad; these guys didn’t do anything worse than what Seunghoon could get used to. Same smoking, same drinking, same occasional highs and different types of stimulants at times, but not the worst he had seen.

  “Explain Seungyoon then.” He challenged the group.

  “Never mind him,” Taehyun shrugged. “He is in a committed relationship with his guitar.”

  “And occasional seasonal flings in which he intentionally let others dump him in order to write believable lyrics.” Minho added.

  “I screwed them both.” Seungyoon smiled upon seeing the question in Seunghoon’s gaze. Jinwoo turned to look at Taehyun with his deer-like eyes widened. So Seunghoon had thought Jinwoo’s eyes are the pivotal of human’s eyes capacity, but of course they could get bigger. Taehyun hurriedly explained. “Only when we are really high, kissing a cow at that point would feel same to be honest.”

  “Hey.” Seungyoon showed objection through his visibly disturbed facial expression.

  “That’s so hot.” Minho choked on his cigarette as he heard Jinwoo. He coughed violently and motioned his hand to dissolve the smoke, very believably coming from his ears. “We didn’t make it pass second base because Seungyoon thought my foot can come.” Seunghoon pretended to vomit while Taehyun just gave a grimace of disgust. Jinwoo covered his mouth in awe when Seungyoon quickly responded:

  “To my defense, whatever your foot is, I think it did.”

 Seunghoon remembered laughing so hard that his ribs hurt. A very hurt Minho elbowed both Seungyoon and Jinwoo because they wouldn’t quit trying to touch his feet while screaming at him “Minho got three legs~” and Taehyun did absolutely nothing to savage the situation. All he gave was a simple nod of approval to which Seunghoon responded with a slow clap.

  “You guys have a very wonderful and deep friendship.” Seunghoon said, emphasizing the word ‘friendship’.

  “I swear to god, Seunghoon, if these motherfuckers ain’t my only source of income I wouldn’t even sit with them.” Mino shook his head and lay back to the couch, threw his legs onto the table. He gave up on the other guys.

  “Oh but you have three legs, the resources of income should be abundant. Right guys?” Jinwoo still wouldn’t quit the joke.

  “He should make so much money he can shit coke out of his ass.” Seungyoon added.

  “Shut up.”

 Minho suddenly looked grumbling. His usual low voice sounded even coarser as he reached for his coat and stood up. At first, people in the room thought he’d been kidding, but as soon as Minho headed to the door, Taehyun stopped laughing and thrust the burnt cigarette to the full ash tray, while Seungyoon shrugged and shook his head. Jinwoo nervously sensed at the dying laughter in the room. This was news, Seunghoon thought.

  “Can I talk to you for a bit?” From the door, Minho’s voice echoed back. “Seunghoon-ssi?” He looked across his shoulders at the other guys, who only responded by drifting their gazes elsewhere, and shrugged. “Sure, wait up.”  
 .  
 .  
 .  
 “How long is general greeting supposed to last, in a socially acceptable manner, before we can talk about real stuff?” Jinwoo seems to slightly lose patience over Seunghoon’s overall silence.

 “Equivalent of loosening up and lube time.” Seunghoon shrugs.

 “Wow, you still speak like an asshole. I take back what I said, you didn’t change that much.” Jinwoo’s exclaim doesn’t sound remotely surprising. His expression quickly changes into that of seriousness:

 “So why, Seunghoon?”

 Seunghoon distractedly plays with the napkins on the table.

 “Do you know that saying, ‘sons who are like their mothers will inherit the family’s bad lucks’?” He drips his finger into the water on the table and drags it around in circle.

 “I grew up watching my mother going berserk at her own parents whenever they brought up my dad’s cause of death. But when the matter came to my hand, I…”

 Jinwoo stares at his own feet.

 “… made the same choice.” He finishes the sentence after Seunghoon is reluctant to say any further.

 “You made the same choice.” He said.

 

* * *

 

He is the brightest light in my world.

           It is always hard to look directly at the light as it is easy to fall in love with it. But we’re almost destined to gearing toward the light. Isn’t it fasinating how the human’s metaphor of truth, morality, and beauty all come down to this one simple thing? The naked eyes human love the light because it signifies so many things; positive, loveable, happy things. In the end, the glamour and undefinable, which could possibly blind them all if _> they let it_, is nothing but a metaphor of a great life they could lead or a great place they should be. Yet somehow, they try to materialize it, shape it, name it, position it as something reachable. Didn’t they see the way moths flying to the burning lamp just to find death. Perhaps that is what they seek. Perhaps going towards the light is ever the last stage of life that every moth has to fulfill – that their life is spent for that mere moment. Perhaps it’s their inevitable ending.  
  
         I had to. I gave up my roof for him. There was no turning back. He is in me now. Surrounds me with wonderful and bizarre sensations of what I am not supposed to feel. Fills me up with warmth and delightful sunshine, illuminating all my corners, sending every bit of dead human cells – the only thing I’m covered with – flying and glowing. I loved it. He could pour in me. I hoarded his light in my shell with such urgency and greed.  
  
         Because soon, the night comes.

_From “The Roofless House.” Lee Seunghoon, 2002_

* * *

 

 

 Despite all the times hanging at this coffee shop, Seunghoon never knew the neighborhood around. Following Minho through all the intersected dark alleys – which he did try to keep up at first, but eventually gave up after the fifteenth right turns and the eighth left – made him realize that. They passed by those small streets that were completely effaced from the surface of glamorous Seoul. The pavement gradually disappeared into the lane and at one point, Seunghoon found himself walking right next to a truck too big for the road but insisted on entering the alley. “Be careful.” Minho quickly said as he firmly grabbed Seunghoon’s lower waist and pulled him inside. “Get away from the truck when you see one, will you.” Seunghoon didn’t realize how but he was put on the safer sidewalk while Minho switched his place to be the one walking next to traffic. The warmth from Minho’s bare fingers etched on his skin through the thin T-shirt fabric like a ghost. He unconsciously brushed the spot again until the feeling went away.

  “So, what was that about?” Seunghoon asked after spending another fifteen minutes in silence walking alongside Minho.

  “What was what?” Minho distractedly asked back.

  “You leaving the room all angry and calling me out here.”

  “Nothing.” Minho twitched his lips into something that tried to resemble a smile but didn’t quite get there.

  “You didn’t just make an excuse to spend private time with me, did you?” Seunghoon knew this type of joke wasn’t really a joke unless the one hearing it thought so.

  “So that was what you think.” Minho tilted his head a bit to look at Seunghoon who rejected to return the gaze. “Do people always come onto you like that or are you just happy to see me?”

  “Neither. I’m not really about that life.” Seunghoon said bluntly. He didn’t need to look at the guy, who somehow got closer and closer after each turn. “So Jinwoo-hyung wasn’t kidding when he said you don’t do dating ever.” Minho snorted as he slightly brushed his nose back and forth. “Is that a choice or a lack of opportunity?”

 Seunghoon wanted to laugh at his choice of words. “Do you always come onto people like that or are you just really happy to see me?” He waited for another cocky response that always couldn’t wait to shoot out of the younger’s mouth. He was surprised at the silence. Mino touched his own neck nervously while looking away; his other hand slightly brushed against Seunghoon’s, at first innocently and naturally like an accident, but then Seunghoon could feel those fingernails trembling on his hand. “The latter.” Minho said in his lowest, tiniest voice.

 Oh.

_Oh._

  “Why were you so angry back in the coffee shop? Did they say something that upset you?” Seunghoon diverted the conversation. He couldn’t stand the nature of it. Minho’s head slightly jerked; he turned to Seunghoon with the most confusing expression on his face.

  “Pardon?”

  “I know someone.” _My mother_. Seunghoon carefully picked his words. “Who never appreciates when people joke about certain things.” _Drugs._ “I don’t know why but she always goes berserk when others, even halfheartedly, use it as a metaphor.” _Because she got something to hide._ “Are you like that too?” _Don’t be like him._ Seunghoon slightly shook his head as he thought about all the things he had encountered while going through his mother’s diary. _She’s done it, but I won’t fall for an addict._

 Suddenly, Minho gripped his hand on Seunghoon’s and pulled him over. Seunghoon lost his balance and fell on Minho’s opened broad shoulders as the drummer grabbed the back of his neck and slightly pulled back. “If you have to punch me,” he whispered under his breath, “wait until this is over.” Seunghoon thought he saw the whole universe unfolded in his eyes when the tiny gap between their mouths abridged.

_Here’s the truth._ Seunghoon found his mother’s diary under her bed on her 34th birthday. She had too much to drink and passed out in the living room, so he had to carry her to her room. It was a rare occurrence that she drank. Seunghoon never saw his mother touching any type of stimulants, not alcohol, not cigarettes, not even coffee. No pain killers, no sleeping pills. It was like she consciously tried to stay a hundred percent substance-free. He carefully brought the notebook back to his own room, locked the door, and started reading. _‘Here’s the truth,’_ she wrote in one of the entries. _‘It starts with a flesh wound or a mental pain that couldn’t be subdued. Human are too fragile in the face of emotional erupts. You learn very quickly how our bodies are not made to shield against either extreme hardships or temptations. Even men. Especially them. The euphoria which refuses to leave would bring you into a field full of flowers and sunshine if you let it. With morphine, your body unlearns pains. For a moment, it brought you back to when your spirit and body weren’t in chronic, constant pain, forcefully instilled or naturally accumulated over time. Cocaine makes you feel invincible, like nothing has ever broken and dreams never shattered, and tomorrow can actually be a better place. Or that the hell hole in which you had your one foot on can be undone.’_ Seunghoon was more impressed, at first, with the way this woman wrote her diary more so than the content.

 Their lips touched, hesitantly in the beginning, but gradually growing stronger and deeper. It should in no way be the first time they kissed, if it brought out anything other than young infatuation and the sound of butterflies in the stomach. It tasted like familiarity, intimacy, and horror, all in once – that Minho knew so well the line of his teeth and the flesh of his tongue was almost fearsome.

  _‘But it never lasted long enough; the worst part of a beautiful dream is when you realize it was a dream, isn’t it? But if you let it, if you find yourself reluctantly pacing in front of a door, well knowing that the chance to step out of that room once you go in is smaller than ten percent.’_ Seunghoon gradually realized that he finally found the answer to his lingering question since he was a child. “Mother, what is the real reason why dad is not here?” He would ask constantly at first, but after the nth time his mother smiled and said “shush, my child. Sleep well,” he eventually learned not to ask any question. _‘Most of the times, you don’t stand the ghost of a chance to come back as yourself. Oh Lord, you never came back as yourself.’_

 Seunghoon could feel the ghosts creeping up on his body and the warmth he felt making its way back, not only on his lower waist where Minho landed his hand, but this time, chilling throughout his spines. Pulses should elevate, pupils should dilate; he almost heard the bloodstream rising up in each of Minho’s veins. _‘As high as those dreamy powders, snorted dry or penetrated through your basilic vein, can take you, don’t crash on your way back. But doesn’t it sound like you have a choice, to not crash on our way back? Why didn’t someone tell you that kissing it in the mouth is still holding on to life but once it seizes your vein death comes waiting at your door? Why did you do that, my love, why did you do that?’_

 He kissed Minho back until his tongue swelled up.

_Oh Lord. He never came back._ She wrote a total seventeen pages of the same sentence over and over again on that entry. It was on her 21st birthday.

 

 

 

 

\+ + +

 

 


	3. lilylilym

 

_He was my favorite person in the whole world. The song that he had written for me, the poems he had whispered upon my ears. But it became repetitive, you know, because you can’t invent new moments out of old memories. Words become tired and once they do, we bear the losses with all our senses. What do you do when you run out of patience for the greatest love, because the feelings are thinned out so much it is barely there? This is the thing. You can’t change the truth but you can make up stories. Realities are just stories your minds tell you – it’s easy, it’s easy. Somewhere in my realities, everything was okay and nothing hurts._

  
_But when it hurts, there is nothing that can alleviate the pain._

Posted 30th January, 2016 by LSH.  
Categories: non fiction, uncategorized.

 

* * *

 

 

 Lee Seunghoon just turns twenty nine for two weeks. His life is alright, despite the expected increased anxiety of adulthood. Job and a place to live have been taken care of. His mother has been in a hospital with professional help. He doesn’t really have to worry about anything. And it has been years since the last time Seunghoon thinks of his past (“the very thing that defines our every sunny day”). He was so young, reckless, and preciously naïve: these were not exactly, but always chosen as, the synonyms for “mostly messy and desperate, with a dash of forgetful and mindless cruelty” when we choose to talk about certain parts of our life. Sometimes, Seunghoon reminisced about the past with an uncertain smile on his lips, wondering if those years actually existed or if it is merely one of the half-baked plots that never made into his (unchangeable, nonnegotiable, uneditable ) novels. The plotline is also incredibly short and cliché to begin with: there was a guy with an inferior complex towards his perfect dead father, who found out the old guy was an addict, then fell for another addict the same way his mother did, because “the sons who are like their mothers” always have to endure hardships. That’s _always_ how the story like this would go, not for the sake of a tired literary trope, but when they say it “runs in the family,” if we’ve got one, chances are we become our parents despite our explicit resistance and conscious effort to avoid it.  
 .  
 .  
 .  
  “You made the same choice.”

 Here Lee Seunghoon is, in the once-frequented coffee shop, having a long overdue conversation with the past he thought he had entirely left behind. In front of him, Jinwoo looks at him with his clear, sad, big eyes. Those eyes still look as keen as he remembers.

 “You know, hyung. My mother always told the most beautiful, beautiful stories about my dad. Of how great he is as an artist, a musician, a human being really. Quick reminder every day since I was tiny, is how I only have his look.” Seunghoon smiles tenderly while playing with the silver spoon in his cup. “She told me a total of seventeen completey different stories of how he died, with various versions of each. She came to my bed at night, told one story, kissed me goodnight, and the next day same thing repeated, with a different one. I was extremely confused when I was little.” Seunghoon stops for a second, then continues.

  “The truth is, if she didn’t do that, she would run out of stories so quickly, because he OD’ed on her 21st birthday. Twenty one. They are children. They are a couple of teenagers who did drug together, the girl followed the boy. The girl got pregnant, because that’s what happened with teenagers couples who didn’t exactly pay attention to sex ed. She got out of drug, but the boy never did. That’s all it really is.”

  “But why, Seunghoon, why did you do that?”

  “Fuck, hyung. What do you think? I’m a crack baby. Hell, it runs in the family. My brain must have been wired to smell the hidden coke head. Of all fucking people, I gotta go for the addict.”

  “No, Seunghoon. What are you talking about?” Jinwoo’s surprised eyes threw him off. Seunghoon knits his eyebrows as he slowly repeats Jinwoo’s question.

  “What am I talking about?”

 Seunghoon asks with a genuine puzzled expression on his face.

 

* * *

 

I open all the windows and the doors. I let out all the water from the rain and the melted snow inside me. The thing about a roofless house is that, storms actually don’t destroy me. They will just swing by if I accept them and let myself go. The water will dry when the sun is out. I just have to wait.  
  
        Time goes by and at one point I stop closing the window and the door. I just let them open because I never ask the sky again when he is going to bring out the rage. Life is so much easier, and he loves me back. He loves me more than all the houses that have roofs. They get shattered, trying to defend themselves in the face of his anger. I don’t have a roof anymore, and after the numerous times his dark sides visit me, everything inside me is also gone. It feels like liberation, almost.  
  
        The only thing is that, I also stop being a house.

_From “The Roofless House.” Lee Seunghoon, 2002._

* * *

 

 

 “Oh, Seunghoon.” Jinwoo exclaims as he reaches out to hold Seunghoon’s hands. “You did it again.” He lowers his voice, and Seunghoon finds himself pondering upon the fear and the excitement of that sentence, indecisive of whether he should feel hurt or relieved by it:

  “You were the one who got Minho into drugs.” Jinwoo said, breathlessly.

 Seunghoon feels as though suddenly falling into the bottom of an icy cold lake. His whole body freezes with the revelation; his skin stings like pressed against thousands of needles. He thinks of Minho’s eyes the last time he had ever seen the boy, those worrisome but beautiful eyes, with teary, smudged black eyeliner, looking down onto him; his lips mumbled something with an echoing, muffled voice. Seunghoon opened up his blurry eyes; he blinked constantly because of the excessive light. He never understood what Minho was telling him till this day, but he now remembered having pushed the guy out of the way and screamed while running away. In his mind, Minho was the one lying on the floor, unconscious, saliva on his lips, eyes rolled back. In his mind, Minho was the one destroying his own veins with inexperienced shots of cocaine that couldn’t make it to the bloodstream. In his mind, he was sketching his father’s real death and planning his mother’s escape, for the thousandth time.

  “When your mother permanently settled in a mental institution in our first year in college, you got intense insomnia. Then you started on sleeping pills and I don’t know how but you got into other substances. They were all prescribed, so I wasn’t very worry.” Jinwoo grabs too tightly on his hands, the fingernails start to hurt the inside of his palm. “But it got worse with you becoming totally shut off from the world. That was why I tried to bring you to places and connect you to interesting people. But you met Minho, and you fell into your worst state. Why?”

 Seunghoon stays silent. So, this is it. The truth he has been so relentlessly protecting. Mother always said it best. Truth is _never the complicated, entangled layers of incidents... It is always what’s underneath. Truth is never readily presented. Human don’t want the stories that write themselves. It has to be the process of digging down, picking, choosing, interpreting, and finally naming the most important piece of information as the Truth._ After all, Truth exists, and it wasn’t able to save him from the _truth_ he held in his mind. It didn’t convince him that the things he heard and saw were all in his head. In the end, it didn’t matter if he was the culprit. It didn’t change the course of actions, nor the consequences. He was there, suffered till breathless, then left before he’d see himself dying.

  “I guess I didn’t want to fall for the poor boy that much. He was everything my father is said to be. Handsome, talented, mesmerizing. The only one in this whole world that made me feel that way.” Seunghoon sighs after minutes of silence. “That kind of love story is dangerous. My mom lived it. She never made it out alive.”

 

* * *

         _But when it hurts, there is nothing that can alleviate the pain._  
  
        And I’m in so, so, so, so much pain. God, it used to be delightful. It used to be about finding the highs and not fighting the lows. It used to be enhancing the life and not avoiding death. But in this whole entire world the only person that could make me happy, the source of my happiness, is not there anymore. What do I do, what do I do?  
  
        I go find him.

Posted 30th January, 2016 by LSH.  
Categories: non fiction, uncategorized.

* * *

 

 

 

  Jinwoo studies Seunghoon’s face for a very long time before responding. “This is what it all means, isn’t it. All the pieces in your non-fiction category. You post them thinking nobody understands.” He bites his lips, as if trying to find the right words. There is simply no right words. “They were all your mother’s last words, aren’t they?”

  Seunghoon touches the phone on his pocket in reflex, but it isn’t vibrating. He pulls it out and look at the screen to make sure it isn’t another call from nurse Kim that he put on mute or the reminder of that appointment he put off for days before finally came in to pick up his mother’s remaining belongings from the hospital. All of it was yesterday’s story. He looks at his phone for a good five minutes, before turning back to Jinwoo.

   “So that was why you emailed me.” Seunghoon’s smile is one that doesn’t convey any emotion, a total emptiness. “Because you saw through my words. Must be hard for you, after all these years, to still worry about me.”

   “No, Lee Seunghoon,” Jinwoo says after much consideration, “I worried and am deeply sorry about you, yes. But I needed to confront you about what happened – I needed to know if it was worth it, being abandoned by you yet still tried to take your side all the while. I needed to know that you are worth it. I’m truly regretful that I wasn’t there.” Jinwoo’s voice sounds quiet and calm. “But we haven’t talked to each other in so long. After you left, I should have come find you, but the boys were mad. I got into fights with Taehyun over you, we broke up, and… I was also mad at you for always having to keep you in check when you take it so easy to ruin my life. I wanted to reconnect to you, but I was waiting for the right moment…” He chokes on his words, realizing what he just said.

   “Kim Jinwoo.” This time, Seunghoon reaches for Jinwoo’s hands and slightly squeezes. “At one point of my life, you were the only connection between me and the world. I never forgot that.” He whispers, “and I couldn’t help but thinking, do I really deserve it? A loyal friend or a lover who doesn’t leave before I do? I tried so hard to imagine a different ending to the story of my life – but somehow all the endings are the same.”

   “No.” Jinwoo reacts instantly. “No, no, no.” He shakes his head almost violently. “That’s not your story. That’s your parents’ shitty life stories and you want to rewrite them. Hell, you spent your whole life trying to rewrite it. And what did your mother do? She let herself go and commiserate her addicted husband to the point she poisoned her son with extreme fears of happiness.” His voice trembles with frustration. “I’m sorry for your loss and my heart breaks for her, but you are not a damn roofless house, or whatever you call yourself. Stop rewriting that story already. You are a goddamn author, give yourself a happy ending.”

   “How?” The question comes out of Seunghoon before he even realizes.

   “I don’t know?” Jinwoo scratches his head anxiously while rushing to find an answer, as if afraid Seunghoon is going to change his mind if he can’t find one instantly. “Put a roof on it and forget about the sky. Fall in love with another house that has a damn roof. Build the house with concrete and see-through rooftop if you still want that damn sky or whatever.”

  Seunghoon burts out laughing. Jinwoo looks at him nervously at first, only starts giggling after realizing that the laughter is not a sarcastic response from his old friend. They laugh, for the first time in many years, in the place that they used to sit with the other friends. Jinwoo is in front of him, his face looks just like when he was twenty-three, with his pink-ombre pigtail and unmatched punk outfit. Next to him, there were always the three boys in NuGalvanists, chainsmoking and playing music; the five of them were in this very same place, talking, making jokes about each other, and laughing until it hurt. Jinwoo was sitting on Taehyun’s laps while shaming Seungyoon for not bringing his partner(s) to the coffee shop to join them. Minho took it as a chance to secretly put his hand on Seunghoon’s lower back, underneath the shirts while Seunghoon tried so hard to hide his goosebumps. The tender thought of Minho makes him withdraw his laugh; Seunghoon lets the warm memory in his dirty little dark heart transfer to each and every vein throughout his body. It could have been a happy ending, _if he let it_.

  Then it reminds him perfectly, _painfully_ of how he has let go.

   “Seunghoon. One question, and you got to be very, very careful when you consider answering this.” Jinwoo unbuttons his collar and fans himself after the intense laugh. He notices Seunghoon’s silence. “Have you relapsed since?”

   “No, I got clean.” Jinwoo’s somewhat worrisome face relaxes upon the answer. “And you, how are you, Jinwoo?” He sincerely asks. “I should have been the one to say sorry but I couldn’t get myself out of this lifelong mess. Did I make you sad, a lot?” Jinwoo shrugs, not answering. He turns away to wipe a tiny tear from the corner of his eyes. He holds a hand out to signal Seunghoon not to ask him any further. The writer reluctant adds:

   “And everyone else? I wonder if it’s even okay to think about them now.”

   “Now you wonder.” Jinwoo sniffs. “It’s almost psychopathic how you just pick your whole life up and settle elsewhere without saying a word.”

   “My shrink calls it ‘disassociation.’ Hate to correct you but I wasn’t exactly in a place where I knew what I was doing. Also exact quote from her.” Seunghoon’s answer makes Jinwoo chuckle in disbelief. “Your mother, the poor woman, is so damn unfortunate but she’s so messed up. She fucked you up, my friend.”

   “She does.” Seunghoon sighs.

   “So what are you going to do now? Are you thinking of, I don’t know, reconnecting with old friends and whatnot?”

   “I don’t know if I deserve a second chance, to be honest.” Seunghoon flicks his own fingernails. “Especially Minho, he must abhor the thought of me, to be honest.” Jinwoo’s suspicious smiles while listening throws him off guard.

   “Why?” He asks, but Jinwoo insists on showing his white teeth without saying anything.

  Seunghoon feels a wind from the door opening behind his back. The amount of emotion that comes with the familiarity of the voice which hits Seunghoon’s eardrum like a thunderbolt was overwhelming.

   “Welcome back, Seunghoon.”

  He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He stands up, knowingly receive the strongest back hug he had gotten received in his whole life, fighting against the verge of tears that consumes his whole being of the moment.

  “Hello there, little boy.” He says while caressing his chin onto those strong arms. “I’m back.” Across the table, Jinwoo cheerfully shows all of his white teeth.

 

 

* * *

The thing about a house it that, people don’t just return to houses for shelter. It’s not the matter of the defense against the ruthless or inconvenient natural phenomena. It’s not about the protection from all possible death causes. It is something people built with life in mind. The walls and the roof aren’t there to create borders or separate the house from the surroundings. It’s not so much an immobile place as it is a living place people try to make. Inside the house there is the life people set up for themselves and those whom they want to connect over that intimate space.  
  
        The thing about a house is that, more often than not, it’s mean to be a home.

_From “The Roofless House.” New edition, Lee Seunghoon, 2016._

* * *

 

 

  .  
  .  
  .

  
  When Seunghoon got home that day, it was already eleven pm. His cat cried as she heard him opening the door, but he passed through her mindlessly. He walked straight into the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror in the dark. He slowly started unbuttoning his shirt. The reflection of the man inside the mirror was nothing he remembered. Skin and bones, popped blue veins covered in bruises. Those dark blue spots on his arms, neck, underarms, groin, they might never heal at all. But he didn’t really have to think about it for seven years – because no one was ever going to see it. And now there would. Just the mere thought of having to explain, or to come clean again, shook him so violently he almost opened the drawers underneath and let himself purposefully forget.

  Except that time, he didn’t. It was the last time, _the truly last time_ , he thought about the things that helped him justify the irrationalities of his version of reality. He opened the drawers anyway, grabbed the white tiny bags, dropped it into the toilet and flushed.

   “All’s well that ends well.” He whispered to himself as the absorbed powder turned the flush almost murky.

 

 

**End.**


End file.
